Falling From The Sky
by Schmiezi
Summary: More than two years after Mary's death, a series of plane crashes catches Sherlock's and John's attention the hard way. Trying to find out the secret behind it, their love is tested when old demons are brought up again.
1. Chapter 1

**Note:**

After four years of writing and five years of reading Johnlock, I was tired of the "friends-to-lovers" thing. So I've decided to start with an established relationship this time. The fic will not change reality as it was given to us by S4 but will make the best of it (I think).

All my love goes out to my two wonderful betas who have agreed to join me once again, GoSherlocked and Katzedecimal. Thank you so much for all your support and input!

This is a WIP. In the beginning, I will post a new chapter every other week and then do my best to keep up. :-)

* * *

"Statistically speaking, right now is the safest time to travel by plane," John says and smiles reassuringly. I cannot help but roll my eyes.

The woman he is smiling at is in her mid-thirties (divorced, no children, rides her horse at least four times a week, likes sailing, used to flying but suddenly scared by last week's plane crash). A damsel in distress, John's Achilles' heel. There are 109 people still waiting in line to check in, 32 of them single straight men. Why does she have to be standing in front of us?

I watch her going from scared to sexually interested in three seconds.

John keeps smiling at her, apparently unaware of the shift in her mood. Time to interfere.

"Yes, don't worry," I chime in with what I hope is a relatively honest looking smile on my face, "The chances of dying in a riding or sailing accident are a lot higher than dying in a plane crash."

She gives me a confused look ("How does he know...") that encourages me to go on, "John, did you pack the stuffed fish we bought for **our** daughter?"

He grins at me, and there is a giggle bubbling up in his eyes. "Sorry," he says to the woman, "he tends to become a bit jealous from time to time." His eyes shift over to me, "For no reason, by the way"

I get a little kiss on my cheek (which is nice) and John's hand quickly pats my back, only to come to a rest on my hips (which is even nicer. Usually, John is not the one to display his affection in public.)

The woman's sexual interest in John fades instantly. (Ha!) She stammers some kind of "Thank you" and turns away again.

John shakes his head (but in that peculiar way that indicates both annoyance, amusement, and affection at the same time and usually leads to another kiss). I beat him with that kiss and he smiles at me afterwards. His hand remains on my hips.

We have been together now for 18 months and 4 days, and I can barely remember how we survived before, without little kisses in public and heavy sex in private, without feeling warm inside just because a "we" exists.

Before we board the plane, we are searched very thoroughly. (No wonder. Last week's plane crash was caused by a bomb placed underneath one of the seats. Security are at maximum alert.) When we enter the plane it is apparent (to me) that it has been searched for explosives just minutes ago.(The smell of dogs is still present.)

I have mixed feelings about dogs since that night at Musgrave but I am not willing to ponder that for long. The case that has led us to the north of Scotland has been both intriguing and hard to solve. It had taken three days and several brilliant deductions (judging from the look of John's face they have been even beyond my normal kind of brilliance) to find out that the daughter had hired her killer herself, trying to fake her death to escape her boring life but underestimating how stupid it is to hire her mother's jealous ex-lover to execute her plans.

Of course cases like this make you think when you are raising a daughter yourself but a saddle makes such an interesting murder weapon that I could not help being happy throughout the investigation. It had been totally worth flying all the way to Inverness. Rosie had been with the Stamfords for the last four days, and she loves being there (something that happens less and less frequently since we all moved back into Baker Street together). I love her to pieces but having a little break from being fathers was also nice.

"You've got no reason to," John says suddenly while I am sitting down in my seat. He does that from time to time, stating things á propos of nothing, expecting me to easily deduce what he is talking about. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Sometimes (like now) I pretend to be ignorant to make him say things out loud he'd rather left unspoken. (Too many unspoken things between us in the past.)

"No reason to fasten my seat belt?" I ask innocently and continue straight faced, "Well, experts might strongly disagree with you on -"

"Sherlock," he interrupts me with this annoyed-amused affection in his voice. Our eyes meet, and I feel my heart melt a little. It always does that when we look at each other like that. "You've got no reason to be jealous," he elaborates after a few seconds. (And he places his hand on my upper leg and it emanates warmth and strength and I love when he does that.)

I just nod, and he smiles at me. (And I love that he does not need me to answer.)

The start of our flight is as uneventful as can be, and soon the hills of Scotland are hidden underneath the almost ever-present cover of clouds. I can feel people around us relax which is stupid because on flight DF354 the bomb went off shortly before the plane reached its destination. I ponder mentioning that but don't.

After a while the flight attendants start handing out drinks and light food. They are busy, 165 of the 174 seats are taken. (I sit down on the seat next to the aisle (the curse of long legs!) and John next to me. The window seat in our row remains empty. That is good. John likes it better that way, and for some reason I am happy when he is, most of the time.)

I watch a man and a woman sneak to the toilette presumably to have sex there while their partners are having their drinks, unaware of what is going on. It influences my own plans for having sex with John there but to be honest, it is unlikely that he would agree to it anyway. He is kind of shy when it comes to having sex in public places. (A pity.)

I start to pretend reading the forensic magazine I downloaded on my mobile while secretly reading my way through a parents' forum (Rosie has done her best to fulfil all clichés about the "terrible twos" and does not seem to stop now that she has turned three.) John pretends not to notice what I am doing. The people around us settle into their seats and turn their attention to whatever it is they brought along in their hand baggage.

In short, all is peaceful when the loud bang shatters the air.

It is a strange sound (no explosion) with some kind of an echo (coming from outside the plane). The vibration of the plane changes slightly (engine problem?), the orientation of the plane does not (nothing serious, at least not yet). People around us start to murmur (no panic, that's good).

"Look," John says, and gestures towards the window. There it is, plain to see. The left engine of our plane is emanating smoke. It is still running though (judging from the noise and the vibration).

"A plane can easily land on one engine," he says to calm us both down. An obvious fact. Yet, it feels nice to have him say it. I just nod.

The flight attendants do their best to appear calm but it is obvious (to me) that they don't have any idea what is going on. I get one of them ("Mrs. A. McDonelly", hair dyed brown because it turned prematurely grey, two dogs, two lovers, one male one female, studying pharmacy in her free-time, unaware that she is pregnant) to come to us.

"The left engine is smoking," I tell her (politely), "you should inform your captain."

Anne or Amelie or Agneta looks at the window in surprise and nods. "I'll see to it," she says and hurries away. She disappears into the cockpit just when the plane starts shaking. Not a good feeling.

John's face shows the sturdy look it always gets when a crisis is ahead but not there yet. He is determined to face whatever challenge will come our way. "Planes can land on one engine," he repeats but takes my hand and holds it tight. I am not really scared, so it must be to calm down himself.

I press his hand in return and do my best to look unimpressed. "Of course," I say. My voice does not even quaver (that much).

Before I have time to analyse how scared I really am both the noise from the engines and the vibrations change.

"Dear passengers," the voice of the (unconcerned! not scared!) pilot comes through the speakers, "I am sorry for the little inconvenience. One of our engines failed, so we have turned it off. Please be assured that there is no reason to panic. Our plane is capable of landing on one engine and fully under our control. We are just sorry to tell you that we will not make it to London. Instead, we will divert to Leeds airport."

"We need to tell Mike and Stella that we won't pick Rosie up at five then," John says while I am dialling already.

There is only the mail box. I leave a message that our plane has been diverted and that we do not know when we will be able to get Rosie. I do not mention the broken engine.

Then I lean against my seat and wait. For what, I am not sure. One minute goes by. Then another. Then another. Nothing extraordinary happens. My shoulders relax (when did I tense them?).

Next to me, John is already checking flight plans and trains on his mobile. The flight attendants start handing out drinks again. I can feel our plane changing direction, taking a long curve to the left. That must be the diverting course.

I open the parents' page again but my eyes refuse to focus on the letters. Instead, my whole body seems to be scanning the plane for signs of trouble. There is nothing to be found. We are flying steadily again, no sound out of place, no vibration that does not belong here. The crew is calm. Then why am I unable to relax?

I look at John again, and for a moment I wish I could just talk about being scared.

We are not good at talking, me even less than John. I remember his love declaration one and a half years ago. I was at a complete loss of words (me!) so I just püressed my forehead against his and then I kissed him. The first time I really talked to him afterwards was when we were finished shagging each other into the floor. Shagging had been better than talking, more intimate and straight to the point of our feelings. Ever since then, we have simply accepted that talking is not one of our strengths.

Now, with the plane damaged and my stomach doing strange things, I wish I had been more insistent about this talking thing. I mentally write it onto the to-do-list that is hanging at the office of my mind palace.

I am still unable to fully relax.

"What does the forum say?" John asks with an innocent look on his face, "Is her behaviour still normal?"

I cannot help but give him a little half-grin. He only mentions it now because he can feel my tension. Talking about Rosie, no, anything that has to do with Rosie, usually makes me relax.

I recall the posts of countless other parents. "Apparently yes," I tell him. "It looks as if children at the age of three are just as eager to test their boundaries as children at the age of two are." I only partly listen to myself while I quote from some of the more drastic reports. Stomping, screaming and kicking is mentioned a lot, and I watch John nodding in agreement.

It is one of his big worries in life that Rosie after all might have been harmed by her first year. He still regrets giving her away so often after Mary's death, he is scared that he might have damaged the bond between them, scared she might not love him because of that. And it is easy to doubt the love of your child when you are screamed at just for turning off the TV.

We are in the middle of discussing how to deal with the fact that Rosie has started (again) to find out if beating us is really not okay, when another loud bang shakes my newly-regained confidence in the Airbus A 320-200. Almost instantly, the plane lurches high into the air.

"Oh my God," I hear John say. Around us, hell breaks lose. The plane lurches again and again, people are screaming, the flight attendants trying to keep control. John instructs about how to brace for impact and that I need to put on my oxygen mask before I help him with his should he be unconscious already. He is on the edge of panic.

I am not.

We are 27,500 feet up in the air, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop whatever is going to happen now. There is no way out, no trick to escape, no way to outsmart a plane crash. I am absolutely helpless, and without any responsibility to save our lives.

Never before have I felt that calm.

I take John's hand, a gesture that stops his emergency monologue instantly. "She loves you," I tell him, "And so do I."

I watch his face fall. We look at each other for what feels like an eternity. "We will survive this," he says stubbornly.

"Maybe," I concede him that. But maybe not, I think without saying it. I am aware of how high in the air we are, and the sheer distance to the ground makes my stomach jerk.

"If we crash into the ocean, don't inflate your life jacket before you are out of the plane," John continues his monologue, unable to stop. He needs to have control, even if it is just imaginary. There is a silent plea in his eyes, and I nod obediently while the erratic movement of the plane makes my skin to crawl. It feels like we are still lurching about without descending. It cannot have been more than two minutes since the second bang but it feels like an eternity.

For some reason I wish the plane would finally start to speed towards the ground.

One of the flight attendants (Amy or Amanda or Annabelle) tries to give us instructions while the others are strapping themselves into their emergency seats. I can barely hear her over the screams around us. John's hand feels warm in mine, strong and steady. I will have to let it go to brace for impact.

The captain's voice sounds shaken when he informs us that we have nearly reached Leeds airport but that we should prepare for a crash landing anyway. No joking. The plane vibrates violently, the remaining engine is howling.

And then it suddenly stops. There is a second of silence. It is a s if all people stop screaming to listen to the engine and hear nothing. Both engines have stopped working now. We are still about 27,000 feet high and both engines have stopped working. I do not see how we can survive.

Then the plane dips. It feels like a roller coaster going over the highest point, and suddenly we are going down so fast that I am pressed into my seat. So this is the end. Should I not be afraid by now?

"Brace for impact, Sherlock!" John shouts but we cannot let go of each other's hands. I hold it for one more second, and one more, and then I break contact. My hand feels cold without his.

High velocity impacts usually make it hard to identify the victims. The fact that John's body and mine might get inseparably scrambled touches my heart. It's poetic, in a cruel way. I look at him one last time, take in all I can. My final gulp of air before drowning. Then I brace for impact.

I close my eyes and my ears take over. It is loud inside the plane now, you can hear the air rushing by outside, and people screaming and screaming, and I am not sure if John says "I love you" or not. There is nothing I can to except hiding my head between my knees and hope for the best.

The velocity is breathtaking. Why are we still falling? How long can it take to crash into the ground? And yet, we are falling and falling. I can hear somebody praying. We are going to die.

I should have called my parents or Mycroft or Mrs Hudson when there was still time. I can feel the speed of the plane in every cell of my body. It is tugging at me, making my skin crawl, hammering against my eardrums. I should have left John at home. The thought of him dying is unbearable. And yet, I am glad to have him here, by my side in my final hour. But that will leave Rosie an orphan, alone in the world. Funny how you can regret and praise one and the same fact at the same time.

We are still falling.

I risk turning my head towards the window. There are some trees rushing by. Funny to see them that at eye level from a plane window. Will Rosie miss us in a few years, or will she barely remember us?

And then we hit the ground, only for a second, and are bounced up again. We are weightless for a moment which feels strangely good. The plane slowly (can't be slowly but feels like it) descends again, and the next ground touching is not soft but brutal. I am pushed against the limits of my straining seat belt, metal screeches, I am thrown back into my seat, the plane still moves forward, there is pain somewhere but I cannot say where and I lose all sense of direction and I need to maintain the emergency position -

And then I am pushed forward again with brutal force. There is an eerie second of silence before my world drowns in blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing I notice is the silence. Shouldn't there be screams, or at least groaning? People moving around to help each other, wounded calling for help?

Instead, nothing.

The second thing I notice is that my sense of balance is off. I am strapped to my seat, yet it feels like I am lying flat on the ground. (Could indicate head injury. I remember pain. Did I hit my head?)

Opening my eyes is a hard task and takes hours. Or so it feels. My sense of time is also off. When they are finally open, I do not understand what I see. I thought my head was bending down between my knees, and that I should see the cabin floor. I do see the cabin floor, but from the side, at eye level, not from above. That is weird. Did the plane get that twisted?

I have to blink but that does not correct the strange image.

When I slowly start moving my limbs (do they all work properly?) I get completely confused. I try and raise my arm but it is stopped by something solid. I try to raise my head but it only seems to move sideways. When I stir my legs and they seem to move sideways, too, it finally makes sense. Despite my initial feeling I am no longer sitting on my seat but lying flat on the aisle.

How did that happen?

Now that I understand where I am, I can sit up with some effort. It makes me dizzy. Around me, people start to moan. Somewhere, a child is crying.

Where is John?

I look up to the seat next to me and stare into the dead eyes of the woman who tried to flirt with John when we boarded the plane (broken neck, most likely not bracing for impact). For some reason, I cannot avert my eyes. She is dead. People died in the crash. (Of course they did. We fell straight from the sky.)

If other people have died, John might as well.

I panic. Want to stand up and start looking for him. Want to find him. Want to see if he is alive and help him if he needs help and get out of this godforsaken plane.

Yet, I remain sitting on the ground, looking at her (not even knowing her name). She is unharmed except for the broken neck. A very fine line of blood has dripped out of her nose when it happened. It is still bright red but no longer running. (That should tell me how long I have been out but it doesn't.) A single strand of her hair (only one) hangs into her face, the rest is still neatly tugged away in a complicated hairdo. She is dirty, fine grey dust covering her. (Me, too?) Would she have refrained from flying if John had not reassured her?

It takes me hours (or seconds, no idea) to look away and get up. Where am I? I know I noticed her again when we boarded the plane, but was she sitting in front or behind us? (There is a logical flaw in my thoughts, I know it but I cannot put my finger on it.)

Which row were we sitting in? I can't remember. I don't know where to look for John.

Next to me on the other side of the aisle, an unconscious man is dying. No need to give first aid. His breath is failing already, his hands are twitching. He will be dead in about one minute. The gurgling sound of his ragged breathing is hypnotising. Blood is spraying out of his mouth every time he breathes out (punctured lung caused by violent pressure?) His eyes are closed. He is also covered in dust. His whole arm is twitching now, his muscles fighting for life while his brain has lost already. Then only the fingers continue to move, then they stop, too. His body gulps for air the way only the dying do, inefficiently, no air entering his tormented lungs.

I cannot turn away. I need to stand beside him until he is dead. Finally, a shiver runs through his body and his hand drops down from his belly. Like the gesture you see in bad films, to hammer into the audience that somebody is really dead.

I do not want to look away. If I do, I'll see only more of that.

But I need to find John.

Or do I need to leave the plane? Is there a danger of explosion? I cannot remember if the Airbus was fuelled at Inverness. I could not leave this plane without John anyway.

John.

I really need to find him. I should shout his name but I am scared that I won't get an answer because he is -

So, where to go, to the front of the plane or towards the tail? When I look back, I can see the soft hill we must have touched when crash-landing. The tail section of the Airbus has broken off. I turn my head to the front section, and there are trees. So the plane has broken at least into three parts. (That's where the dust is coming from, then. Earth, dispersed at the impact, still filling the air, entering the cabin through the enormous holes at both ends.)

The child stops crying. (Don't wonder why! Just don't think about it!)

I slowly make my way to the front rows of what is left of the cabin. It takes forever. I do not help the young man pleading for help, nor the woman who tries to unfasten her seat belt. There is pain every time I need to reach for one of the headrest to stabilize myself but I cannot make a connection to where I got hurt. Am I in some state of shock?

There are 43 rows on this plane. In every one of them, people are scared or hurt or dying or dead. After passing the third row - (a man, mostly unhurt besides a strained ankle, shouting at another man who is dying. He loves him (brother rather than lover), and he is losing him. His voice is breaking as he repeats his angry chant of "Do not leave me" again and again. Next to them, an old lady is suffering from a head wound (smashed her head against the window. It's smeared with her blood). She will not survive but has not realised it yet. She is staring at the back of the seat in front of her while her hands are fumbling with the seat belt. Her fingers lose grip again and again, her fine motor skills already gone.)

After passing the third row my brain tunes out all of the horrors. I know there must still be people all around me but I can no longer see them clearly. It is simply too much to comprehend.

My brain is capable of fooling me in cruel ways. (I never had a dog.) What if I pass John and he is so badly hurt that my brain will tune him out as well? What if that has already happened?

(Can't think about it now. Need to go on!)

It takes me eight rows before I realise my mistake: I have been pushed out of my seat when the plane came to a stop. That means I must have been thrown forward. Our row must be behind me, and now I am moving even further away from it.

Fatigue seems to fall from the sky (like we did not long ago). My legs stumble, and I can barely turn around without falling to my knees. I notice pain somewhere in my body, several places hurt but I cannot tell which. How can I ever make it back all the way to John?

But I need to.

So I pass the third row again. I cannot tell if the brother is still alive or if the lady managed to open her seat belt because I cannot see them clearly. They are just blurred figures now, barely visible.

Another blurred figure touches me, probably trying to help me. I cannot talk to him, somehow, only push him aside to pass him by. He says something but I ignore him. Need to find John!

And then I can finally see him. (Breathing, is he breathing?) In the midst of tragedies he is the only person I can see sharply. He is still strapped to his seat, his head lolling to the left (but not too far, no broken neck!). Blood is dripping onto his forehead, mixing with the dirt on his face (but not too much, no danger from loss of blood). (But is he breathing?) His eyes are closed, and his whole body slack (but not completely, like a corpse). He is unconscious (not dead).

I do not understand why my hands are shaking as I reach out to feel his pulse. (Steady.) I look down and see his chest moving up and down regularly (and my sight is slightly unfocused, I need to blink a few times to see him clearly) (Why are there tears running down my cheek?) (There is pain again but I ignore it.)

The relief is so big that I tumble to my knees next to him. He's alive! I wipe away my tears (I still do not know when I started crying) and my brain slowly starts to deliver first aid instructions (Need to tend for his head wound and bring him into recovery position). (Or do I need to get him out of the plane first?)

My (sluggish) thoughts are interrupted when he stirs. (Alive!)

I cup his cheek. "John?" I hear myself say (softly).

His eyes flicker, then open (unfocused. Concussion?) He tries to focus on me and somehow that sends a piercing pain down my chest. His lips move ("Sherlock.") but he makes no sound.

"I am fine," I tell him, knowing that is what worries him the most. (I still feel pain somewhere but my brain cannot register the affected body part. But I was up and running just a minute ago and not dizzy that much so that counts as fine.)

His eyes (his wonderful big blue eyes) still fail to find a focus on me. "We're alive," he whispers (with amazement). I nod wordlessly, a lump in my throat suddenly detaining me from speaking. He gives me a little half smile, joy in his eyes. His hand reaches out to touch me but he still has not managed to focus on me and his hand misses my face by several inches. (That sends another stab of pain down my chest.) I take it (gently) and hold it against my face. He smiles again.

Then his eyes roll back into his head and he moans. In the distance, I can hear the siren of an ambulance.

Suddenly, my brain jumps into action, and I know exactly what to do: get our jackets from the overhead locker (to keep him warm), get him out of the plane, get help.

His body goes slack again, his head falling down onto my shoulder. (My loins are burning and burning, a strange kind of pain that is not pain but fear.) (Don't die on me don't die don't die!)

Then he comes to again with a little jolt. He stares at me, wide-eyed and uncomprehendingly. His mouth opens and closes again and again.

"We are fine, just fine," I chant, stroking his cheeks, letting my low voice washing over him (I know he loves that). "I will get us out of here, and then a doctor will take a look at you and you will be fine, just fine."

(I wish I would believe it myself.)

He nods, then winces in pain (concussion?). His body drops against mine, slack again.

His repeatedly losing consciousness is driving me insane and I think there are tears rolling down my face again. But there is no time to drown in pain. I lean his body (gently) against the backrest of his seat, open the overhead locker (only a little twisted) and get out our jackets and his backpack (ugly thing, blue synthetic, but containing all our papers). I wrap him into his jacket (with some effort) while he only stares at me with these damn unfocused eyes. Then I (clumsily) get him to his feet.

We stagger for a while until I find a stable position, his weight resting mostly on my hips. He remains conscious which really helps me to find a way out of the plane. Not the emergency exit, but a rather huge crack in the cabin wall. (How strange to leave a plane and have grass underneath your feet without going down the stairs.)

Outside, the horror continues. Or so I think. There are blurred figures lying on the grass, some attended by medics, some covered, hidden from view already. People are shouting, moaning, crying, rattling.

The loudest sound in my ears though is John softly groaning.

That gives me focus again. I need to get him to safety, away from the plane, and get somebody to help him.

The area seems to be flooded with helpers, and it turns out that all I have to do to get help is move another five steps away from the crash site. A young paramedic (relieved to be able to take care for someone surviving) helps me to move John into a makeshift tent on a soft nearby hill (How long since the crash is it?). When we lower him onto a stretcher, he fades out and comes to again with a jolt. His unfocused eyes -

I can no longer stand them. I have to look away.

That might have been a mistake, for now I can see the whole of the crash site. The nose of the plane is lying on its back, several yards away from the cabin. The tail of the plane is driven into the ground almost vertically. The cabin is compressed, its hull torn in several places. There is debris lying around, as well as body parts.

When my brain realises what I see, it filters out the body parts almost instantly. That is extremely annoying, so I rather look back at John, who is frowning in pain.

Looking at him feels just as bad as looking at the crash site.

I am caught in hell.

But I am alive.

For some reason, I remember our baggage. With the belly of the plane driven into he ground like that, all baggage must be lost. I cannot get my thoughts off the little stuffed clown fish we have bought for Rosie at Inverness. (She loves fish, watches that strange animated film in an endless loop whenever we allow her to watch TV. Knows more kind of fish than me.) She would have loved it but now it is pressed into the ground by 60,3 tons of steel.

The young medic brings herself to my attention again. She assures me that John is most likely to have only a concussion and that there are people who are hurt worse who will be brought to hospital first. Then she tries to examine me but I hush her away. She brings us blankets and a folding chair for me and hurries off to help the other survivors.

(Other survivors? I remember the horror of the first minutes after the crash landing, remember so many people my mind replaced by blurred figures to save me from reality. Are there really enough survivors to keep a whole medical unit busy?)

We, the injured with low priority, are left behind in the makeshift shelter, with nothing to do but stare at the wrack of our plane and wait. The sun is shining down on the crash site, and that feels just terribly wrong. Shouldn't it be dark night, or raining?

John's eyes finally focus on me. He quickly examines my face, frowns for a second (why?), then looks straight into my eyes. "We survived," he says again in amazement and squeezes my hand hard. I look at him, relieved that he is no longer drifting away from me.

"We survived," I repeat, returning the pressure to his hand, taking in the heat he is radiating, drowning in his wonderfully focused eyes. My whole body gives in all of a sudden, and I have to lean against him. Our foreheads touch, a soft reminder of the moment we became a couple. I allow myself to close my eyes for a moment, ignore the world, and only feel John's skin touch mine.

We survived.


	3. Chapter 3

When I have finally lost all track of time, two medics come and bring us to an ambulance. I follow them without looking back at the wreck that had once been a plane.

On the way to the hospital (Hospital at Leeds, Leeds General Infirmary? Or somewhere else entirely? I have no idea how close to Leeds we have made it before dropping out of the sky. I have no idea where we are.) one of them tries to examine me for whatever reason but I hush him away. They need to concentrate on John.

When they turn their attention back to John, I close my eyes for a second – and open them again almost instantly. I am tired, worn out, and surely on sensory overload. But closing my eyes means allowing memories (the moans of the dying) to come creeping in (a baby screaming), and I am not ready for that (the smell). Not yet.

Instead, I focus on John again. He is lying on a stretcher, pale and fragile. They have attached an IV line to his arm, tended to a minor head wound, done a few simple tests. They suspect a concussion but they need to check his skull at hospital just to make sure. Very reasonable.

It is almost peaceful here inside the ambulance. Only John and the two medics and me. No smell of burned plastic, no moaning wounded, no chaos. Quite irrationally I hope for our trip to last forever.

But of course it does not. Just when one of the medics tries to examine me again, we reach the hospital (Leeds General Infirmary. We are in Leeds.) They roll John inside the E.R. (with me trailing behind) where a wave of chaos washes over us again.

The emergency room is crowded.

I cannot wrap my mind around that. I have seen so much suffering, so many dead and dying people. How can there still be so many victims alive and in need of help?

I cannot wrap my mind around it but I do not want to deal with it right now, anyway. What I need to focus on now is that John is fine. John. It's always him. So I told him at his wedding but he did not understand what I meant.

Now he does.

We are brought into some kind of hell for the wounded. There is no space left for us but on the corridor in front of one of the examination rooms. People on stretchers are rolled by, and for some reason my brain refuses to tune them out. A young boy, not older than seven, with a swollen face, crying for his Mummy. A woman, mid-sixties, unconscious, fractured leg. It goes on like that. None of them are getting any privacy in their suffering.

A young man, barely twenty, crying with pain.

I avert my eyes from the passing horror and look at John again. He is taking all of it in, his compassionate eyes filled with sympathy. After a while he reaches for my right hand and holds it tight (which is funny because I am standing to his right. My left hand is closer to him but he insists on the right one. I should think about it but I can't.)

"We survived," he whispers. He does not just mean "We are alive", he means "We are BOTH alive". I cannot look away from him. There had been a realistic chance for one of us to die in that crash. That thought punches the breath out of my lungs and makes my eyes sting. I nod, unable to say anything, and press his hand. Hard. He returns the pressure, strong and steady and warm. When I can breathe again, I let go a little.

Just in that second, an elderly nurse disturbs our enclave of peace by rolling John into the examination room. He does not say hello or how are you, just moves the stretcher into the room where an (exhausted looking) doctor (moved to England during puberty) is waiting for the next patient.

He examines John with an efficiency that gives me reassurance. Checking for signs of concussion and ordering an X-ray scan of John's skull takes less than two minutes. Checking the rest of his body another two. Trying to examine me (for no apparent reason) and being hushed away another fifteen seconds. After waiting for hours we are rolled out of the room again after less than five minutes.

(But have we really waited for hours? I have lost all track of time.)

Somebody rolls John into another corridor and leaves us in front of another room. Here, we wait again.

John gave me a funny look when I refused to be examined again but has not commented on it yet. I guess that when it is finally clear that he is really really fine, I will graciously allow a doctor to take a look at me, just to make John happy.

The corridor in front of the X-ray room is equally crowded. I recognise some of the other patients. One was standing three rows behind us at the check-in, another one was sitting next to us when we were waiting to board the plane. They had both tried to engage us in brainless banter.

Now, they are both quiet. Nobody wants to talk. It is as if the crash has left us all speechless.

I reach for John's hand again, and he presses it. He is getting weaker, I can feel that from his grip. I look at him and this time, I try to really see him too. He is tired, dark circles forming underneath his eyes. Must be in pain. (And for some reason concerned about me.) His eyes are slightly out of focus again. He needs rest.

It is slowly dawning to me that he will not be able to leave the hospital today. Just when I think I need to panic, another nurse comes and pushes us into the room. She places John in front of the X-ray machine and pushes me out of the room.

(And I am proud to say that I did not resist at all.)

(Almost.)

Outside the room, there is too much space to worry. What if it is not just a concussion? What if John is hurt worse and nobody realised it so far? What if he collapses just now that I am outside the room? What if there is a huge clot of blood in his brain already and he convulses and they hurry me back in but he has died already within seconds and when I reach him he is -

Just then, the nurse rolls him out again. Of course he is still alive. We have to wait for the results but only for a few minutes, she says.

I do not have to tell John about my panic attack. He can see it in my eyes and in my heart. The sympathetic look on his face is almost painful.

"I need to kiss you," he says, and I realise that we have barely talked to each other since we made it out of the wreck.

I lean down to him (and there is pain again but I don't know where) and kiss him, and the tear that is rolling down my cheek is nothing to be ashamed of. I will deny it had been there anyway should he ever mention it again.

"I love you," I whisper.

Before John can answer, another nurse comes and pushes us first into an elevator, takes us to the casualty ward and into another room. A standard four-bed hospital room.

John will definitely not go home tonight.

A young doctor comes and tells us that John is fine except for a severe concussion (A heavy weight is falling off my chest. He is fine.) and needs to stay in hospital for a day or two. No, he will not be able to be transported back to London just now. Yes, he will be completely fine again.

The doctor leaves, another nurse comes in, and something in John's demeanour changes. Suddenly it is Captain Watson lying in that hospital bed. He grabs my right hand again, presses it really hard, pulls me down so he can kiss me again, and says, "I am fine."

I nod, and he gives me a strange little smile. "Sherlock," he says, his voice soft and demanding at the same time, his eyes piercing, "please let them take a look at you now!"

I want to object, want to tell him that it is not necessary yet, that I will just stay a little bit longer by his side before giving in but there is something in his eyes that silences me. I look away – and suddenly I see my own reflection in the window.

My face is swollen, far worse than I realised. Most of it looks like haematoma but there could also be a broken cheekbone. The reflection is not very clear but there seems to be dried blood on my temple. My nose is definitely broken. I look like hell.

When I reach out for the hand rail of John's bed, there is this sharp pain again. It seems to be coming from my left wrist. (John refused to hold my left hand.) I look at it (there had already been pain whenever I was stabilising myself inside the crashed plane with my left hand) and see it pointing away from my arm at an odd angle. My wrist is broken.

Suddenly I feel sick. Not really like I need to vomit, more like being on a slowly rolling boat. I close my eyes and nod. "All right," I say. I feel his thumb stroking my right hand softly.

"Thank you," he answers, as if I had just granted him the biggest possible pleasure.

I open my eyes again to find him smiling at me. He is even more tired now, fighting to keep his eyes open. I lean down (pain again, my whole face is throbbing) and press a little kiss onto his cheek. "I'll be right back," I promise.

A nurse leads me out of the room, brings me down to the ground floor and leaves me sitting on a chair in front of another examination room. I think I am tired, too. I stretch my legs but before I can find a comfortable position, I am already being led into the room.

Another young tired looking doctor examines me. Apparently my cheekbone is not broken but my wrist and my nose surely are. My nose is readjusted (painful!) and taped and then I am led to the X-ray room again. My wrist is fixed onto a little table-like thing, and an X-ray is taken. I am pushed into the corridor again, then into another examination room where another doctor tells me I'll need a cast after my wrist has been fixed. He grabs my arm, and before I can protest every bone is back to where it belongs. The pain sends tears down my cheeks and I cannot breathe for a moment.

The doctor is too professional to be sorry. It does not take him long to apply the cast.

"You will need an appointment with your local doctor," he tells me, claps my back and hands me a rather big box of pain killers.

I want to know if I will be able to play the violin again but somehow that is a too pathetic thing to ask. So instead I accept the pain killers that are pushed into my hand and find myself in the elevator, trying to locate John's room.

I feel like walking through cotton wool by now. My senses are numb, my face hurts, the cast is an artificial intruder. When I finally find John, he is sound asleep. It is stupid of me to feel betrayed. Yet, I want to cry like a lost child.

When I settle down onto a chair besides his bed, a nurse hushes me away. Apparently I cannot stay here for the night, as the room is already crowded with five beds instead of four. I am fit to walk, and I will have to walk out of the hospital soon.

They allow me to write John a short message onto a sheet of paper and to press a kiss onto his forehead (he stirs and smiles but does not wake up). Then I am brought down to the entrance hall.

Here, a very exhausted looking young lady from the airline checks my name on a list and then hands me the keys to a nearby hotel and a voucher for a free cab ride. She also hands me the bag I was carrying when we left the plane. How did it get here? She leads me outside the hospital. (It is dark. What time is it?)

I think I should feel something but I don't. Maybe later.

A cab is hailed and brings me to the hotel. There, I am brought to my room by a very friendly woman (can't deduce her, too tired) who explains something or other about the Internet access and breakfast. Then she leaves me alone.

I am left standing in the middle of the room without the slightest idea of what to do next.


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks to my betas for their good work even when on holidays! :-)

* * *

For a while, I keep standing in the middle of the room (freshly renovated, big window, king-size bed, very modern). My head feels like my thoughts are racing but I am not thinking about anything. It's a weird feeling. I remember the last time I felt like that and quickly will that memory away.

When my legs start to protest, I sit down on the bed. My eyes fall onto the remote control for the big TV hanging on the wall where a canvas should be instead. For no reason at all I turn it on.

The first thing I see is the wreck of our plane, filmed from a helicopter. I cannot look away, no matter how much I want to. It was filmed at daytime, revealing some of the horror we have been through. The tail of the Airbus broke off and remained rammed into the ground. The middle section is torn in several places, compressed. The nose has moved away from it after breaking off and is lying upside down. The pilots are surely hurt or -

And then I realise that I don't know anything about the crash-landing. I was aboard but I cannot tell how many people survived or how the pilots are now or why the hell we dropped from the sky. Any imbecile watching the news today already knows more about it than me.

I force myself to listen to what is said on screen. There is a middle-aged woman talking, hoping that today's crash will finally boost her career. (Unlikely.)

"...confirm that there was smoke seen coming from the left engine. Why the pilots decided to turn off the right engine of the Airbus A 320-200 instead is not yet clear. Although already heading for Leeds Bradford International Airport, the plane was still high in the air when the left engine stopped working and the plane crashed down. Investigators of the AAIB have arrived at the scene already."

The scene cuts to a man from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch of the government. He is wearing a neon yellow high-visibility vest, the letters AAIB bold on his back. In that scene, it is already dark. He is standing in front of the wreck, looking at the ground. The camera swings around and shows him from the side.

"Dan Miller, leading investigator of the accident, says it is still too early to speculate on the cause of accident. Experts are now searching the crash site for the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. Once they have been found, a thorough analysis of the accident will begin."

I can tell from the way she holds her hands that she will definitely not get the career boost she is hoping for.

It is also clear to me that Dan Miller is already analysing what he is seeing thoroughly. I switch through the channels until I find one where the report of our crash is just beginning from the start again. Thankfully, it is one of the more competent news channels (if there are any).

"Plane crash at Leeds kills 64 of 171 people aboard," the serious anchorman tells me, and I immediately lose track of what is going on on screen. 64 victims. That means only little more than one third of us. This number is much lower than I thought. (And my mind jumps back to the plane wreck where my brain tuned out most of what was going on around me. I force myself back into the present.)

I must have lost several minutes of the report that way, for the news presenter has already moved on to talking about why it is so important to find the flight recorder. Again, you can see Dan Miller in the background, looking at the debris in a very concentrated way. I have never paid much attention to plane crashes so I do not know what the debris can tell him but I recognise a man deducing when I see one.

The voice of the newsreader catches my attention again, "... hotline for family members. Call 0800 475475 to find out ..."

Family members. Damn. I never paid a single thought to the fact that there might be people worrying about us! Stupid, stupid me.

I grab the (ugly) traveller's bag with all our stuff and search it for my mobile. I cannot find it (Wasn't it in my trousers pocket when the plane crashed?) but I find John's. Just as well. When I turn it on (not easy with a broken wrist and shaking hands but I manage) there is a total of 54 messages and texts and unanswered calls.

Who do I need to call first? Did Mummy and Daddy know we were on that flight at all? Mycroft has surely got detailed information on us from the hospital already, and he surely knows the colour of the carpet of my hotel room. Would he inform anybody that we were fine? Well, he would surely tell Mrs Hudson, for he is always secretly scared of her wrath coming over him again.

I try to dial the Stamford's number but my hand is shaking so hard that I miss the numbers again and again. So instead, I sink back onto the bed and just stare at the display. Somehow, I long for the good old times when I was sure nobody would give a damn about me.

Then, I free myself from the idea that I have to call each and every friend we have. There is a hotline, and Mycroft, and Mrs Hudson. The news that we are still alive will have reached everybody by now.

My eyes wander back to the screen where the wreck is shown for the nth time. For this shot, the helicopter was flying higher. You can see the runways of Leeds Bradford International Airport in the distance. It feels wrong to crash-land a plane that close to the airport.

"… do still not know what exactly caused the engine to malfunction or why the pilots turned off the wrong one. With both pilots dead now, investigators will intensify the search for the flight recorders ..."

What time is it, anyway? I wonder if Rosie is still awake. I long to hear her funny high-pitched voice. John's mobile tells me it is right after midnight. I ponder asking Mike or Stella to wake her up but then I dismiss that. It would be purely egoistic, for Rosie surely does not know that anything happened today at all.

The anchorman catches my attention again, "... killed 64 of the 171 passengers. Among the survivors are daily soap star Mickey LaRouge as well as London's detective duo Sherlock Holmes and John Watson."

Why do they mention a third class actor first? Impertinence. But then, I no longer have to worry about calling people. (Detective duo. John will love that.)

(My wrist starts throbbing. I miss him.)

I start another attempt to watch the full report on the crash. It has just started from the beginning. 64 victims, left engine malfunctioning, right engine turned off, co-pilot died in hospital an hour ago. Cut to the good men of the AAIB investigating, some shots of the wreck. Semi-famous survivors. The airline has a hotline. Then the report starts again. 64 victims, left engine malfunctioning, …

I switch to another channel (the right engine was shut down), then to another (the co-pilot is now dead, too), then to another (there is a hot line for family members), but that is all the information on the crash you can get.

Then, on one of the more trashy news channels that also call it "news" when an underage singer releases a new brainless pop album, a comment catches my attention, "... brings up memories of the Kegworth air disaster of 1989 that killed 47 and injured 79 after the pilots shut down the wrong engine."

Why does that catch my attention?

I really do not know anything about plane crashes. Is it such an unusual cause of accident? It is highly unlikely that two planes in twenty years are destroyed by the same kind of mistake? Does the comparison mean anything? Or is it just an irrelevant bit of information?

I want to think about it. I want to access the Internet via John's mobile and do some research. But I can barely type the keywords to start the search. My hands are shaking and I always get distracted by one thought or the other.

Just when I decide to stop trying, the mobile rings. I look at the display uncomprehendingly for a few seconds. "Mike Stamford", the letters on the screen tell me. When I answer the call, it is Stella's voice that is coming out.

"Sherlock, how are you?"

(There is emotional distress in her voice, and relief, and honest interest in my answer. Yes, life had been better when nobody gave a damn.)

I don't know how to answer to that, so I just say, "Fine." It sounds hollow in my own ears but is the best I can manage. (How **do** I feel, by the way? No idea.)

She is silent for a second (waiting for me to elaborate), then goes on, "Sherlock, Rosie just woke up and I thought you might want to talk to her. She does not know that something is seriously wrong, just that Daddy has a headache and that you will come back tomorrow. But maybe you want ..."

Yes, of course I do. I close my eyes for a moment, prepare myself to sound as composed as I can. And then there is Rosie's voice, a bit sleepy but happy as almost always.

"Papa, Daddy has a headache," she tells me, proud to have information to share. She loves to share information and never understands who already knows what.

"Yes, he has, but he will be fine," I tell her, not sure if she needs to hear that. (I need to hear that.)

"I had rice pudding for dinner," she chimes. (Sweet dinner is something she never gets at home for sugar makes her downright crazy.)

"That's nice for you," I say, "Have you been such a good girl that Mike and Stella let you have something sweet?"

"Allosaurians were carnivores," she answers.

I love to have conversations with her. The undisguised view into the racing mind of a child.

Stella whispers something I cannot understand, and Rosie says, "I love you Papa."

Before I can respond accordingly, she informs me, "We are done talking. I'll hang up now!" She blows me a kiss and the line is broken.

Nobody ends a phone call faster than Rosie.

God I love her.

My mind is dragged back into the present by something. What was it? Must have been the TV. "Breaking news", a news ticker informs me, and the newsreader explains, "... that only eight hours after the crash landing of InterScot flight SC-304, the cockpit voice recorder has been found. Experts of the AAIB will now analyse ..."

Why did it take them eight hours? There is such a recorder aboard every scheduled flight, and its location is surely not a secret. Can't one deduce where it can be found after a crash?

The news tells me that it will still take days to find out why the plane fell from the sky the way it did, and all of a sudden I do not want to think about it any longer. I want to sleep, and then I want to wake up again, and then I want to go to the hospital and take John home, and then I want to pick up Rosie from the Stamfords, and then I just want to be at home with them.

But most of all, I want to sleep. Not a realistic wish, I am afraid to say.

The throbbing in my broken wrist gets worse, and my eyes are burning. It is way past midnight. I need to sleep. (Gone are the days of youth when I could run on a case for 45 hours before collapsing on any given underground. I am getting … well, not younger.)

So I dutifully brush my teeth with a horrible hotel one-way toothbrush and insulting hotel tooth paste, wash my face with a scratchy hotel facecloth and ignore the fact that I should have taken a shower instead. I am surely dirty, and sweaty, but the challenge of taking a shower alone with a broken wrist is nothing I can face today.

So I heave my dusty body into the clean hotel bed, turn off the TV, turn off the lights -

and lie wide awake.

I cannot find a comfortable sleeping position. The cast on my arm is always in the way. The pillow is too soft. The room is too bright with the street light coming in, and too silent. The bed is too empty. My head is too full.

Without wanting to, I remember the worst night of my life. Try to force the memory away, and fail. The feeling has been very similar. First, the illusion of a happy ending, then the mental drowning. The pillow had been too hard that night, the sofa curved in the wrong places. The scent of Claire de la lune in my nose even though she had been dead for months. Impossible for it to still linger in their flat but my nose had been convinced of smelling it.

John upstairs in his bed, me down in the living room. Miles apart. He had not drowned that night, even though it had been a close call. I had convinced Eurus not to let him die by giving her my love, and he had taken me home afterwards.

With Baker Street destroyed he had not even thought about it. His natural helper's instinct. He had taken me home with him, and put me on the sofa, and left me alone with a soft blanket and my thoughts. Had he lingered a bit longer than a platonic friend would have? That night, I did not know. I did not dare to think so.

(He had, I would find out much later, but that night I could not tell.)

I remember lying on that sofa, supposed to fall asleep, my thoughts running in circles instead. I never had a dog. Victor has been my friend. John did not drown. I would have killed Mycroft if I had had to. I never had a dog. Eurus loved me so much she killed an innocent boy. Baker Street could be beyond repair. John did not drown. He failed to save the governor's wife. We all did.

I never had a dog. There was nobody left to turn to for peace in my mind palace.

The loneliness had almost killed me. John was there, only four point eight meters away from me, and yet so completely out of reach. He was sleeping in his (their) bed while I was drowning on his sofa.

But John did not drown. I saved him.

Who would save me?

At some point during my ordeal I heard him sneaking down the stairs, stopping at the bottom. He stood there for a long time, most likely watching me. I pretended to be asleep. Why, I no longer remember. Then he sneaked upstairs again.

That night, I failed to deduce, failed to understand why he had been standing there in the middle of the night. All I could think of was that I never had a dog, and that he had put me on the sofa and went upstairs alone, and that we had to be friends just friends and that I would have killed my brother if I had to to spare John's life and that I loved him.

I never fell asleep that night, and in the morning I observed that John had not slept at all too, and I failed to deduce.

But it was different now, I have to remind myself. I am alone in bed, and hurt, and worn out, but loved.

There is a new room in my mind palace. I do not know when it came into existence but I know I passed it by several times before. The door is always partly open. I have glimpsed through but never needed to enter. Tonight, I do.

I step over the threshold and am standing in a cottage. It is simple, and small, and flooded with sunlight. There, I find John. I realize that this is the first time after kissing him for the first time (oh that glorious kiss) that I need company in my mind palace. And inner John is there, waiting for me, just like real John would. He is a bit younger, the John I never got to kiss. He smiles at me wordlessly and embraces me.

That is all I need to finally fall asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

That night, I dream of Eurus and her tale of a girl on a crashing plane. It is a wild dream, illogical and painful. When I wake up, I am relieved, and unable to recall most of the dream. (Did she really know how it felt to be in a plane that crashes down? I still fail to say if she is capable of empathy or not.)

Sunlight is shining through the curtain of my hotel room. The mobile on the night table is flashing (blinking?), indicating unread messages. John, I think, before remember that the mobile actually is John's and that mine got lost in the crash.

I check it anyway. It is a text from Mycroft. "The airline offers free flights home. I have booked train tickets for both of you" it reads. I hate when I have reasons to love him.

Home. I consider that word for a moment. Home means Baker Street. The smell of it is in my nose when I think of it. Not the smell it had had, long ago, when we moved in for the first time, dust and formaldehyde and Chinese food and coffee. Not the smell it had when we moved in together for the second time, of new paint and baby powder and nappies and the stuff John used on his face because he thought I would mind the little wrinkles that start to show.

No, both were wonderful smells but the smell in my nose is the present. It talks about fresh fruits and children's bath applications and chocolate and hair dye. It makes me long to be there right now, with my family, with nothing to do but read children books and build wooden rail road tracks and have tea with Mrs. Doll.

I close my eyes and instantly feel like falling to the ground from 27,500 feet. Bad mistake. I open them again and pretend that I am not swaying. John. I need to be with John.

There is breakfast offered at the hall, a flyer on the night table informs me. Now I am caught in a dilemma. John makes me eat breakfast every day because we are good examples for Rosie even when she cannot see us eating and so we are having breakfast every day. But having breakfast takes time. Time I am without John. And I need to take some kind of shower with my cast being held out of the water-jet and I need to get dressed, which will take an insane amount of John-free time as it is.

About getting dressed … What should I wear after taking a shower? I have got nothing with me, for everything I had packed got lost in the crash, I suppose. So what now?

I am lost.

I hate the feeling and yet, I can do nothing about it. Should I take a shower? Or better just wash myself with a flannel? Should I call the reception and ask for new clothes? Or should I just put on my old clothes again? (They smell of blood and kerosene and hospital.) Should I …

The phone rings. Mycroft. I take the liberty of rolling my eyes, even though he cannot see me, and pick up.

"I have arranged for new clothes to be brought to your room, they should be lying at your door step already," he says. Damn, I really hate loving him. "There should also be a plastic bag to protect your cast from the water. Take your time, have breakfast. John will be released today but he is still sleeping anyway."

Mycroft says "breakfast" with the same disgust he would use to say "daily soap", "pop music" or "referendum". I cannot help but smile a little. Then I close my eyes, only for a second, and there is the feeling of falling again.

"What happened to us?" I ask him, knowing, accepting how small I sound.

"What happened is simple to say," he responds, "you were part of a plane crash. Why it happened is a more pressing question. I have been informed that the AAIB sent their best man to find out."

Dan Miller, no doubt. I remember watching him on the news last night, walking amongst the remains of our plane, deducing. My mind must be sharper today, for only by remembering his image on TV leads me to a few deductions about him. (Negligibile, but it is nice to feel my brain working properly again.)

"Well, let the AAIB do their job, then," I tell Mycroft, "I just want to go home." I hang up before I have to thank him for the train tickets. He knows I am grateful anyway.

There are clothes and a plastic bag waiting for me in front of my door, just like he said. I take a shower (good thing I am flexible), and get dressed (neat black suit, battle dress to make me feel safe), and have breakfast (two slices of melon and a cup of coffee. Not even John can force me to have **lots** of breakfast). I do not read the latest news about the crash on my mobile, ignore the latest issue of The Yorkshire Post, and also ignore the three people who had been on the plane as well.

But I had breakfast, I think when waiting for a cab. Having breakfast is a normal thing to do, and so is waiting for a cab. Normal feels good today. Yesterday was filled with abnormalities and all I want today is move on. Move back to normality.

The cab is still not in sight, so I just look up at the sky. It is a wonderful kind of morning, with sunshine and big white clouds. I can see a plane high up in the sky, leaving a short condensation trail. I watch it for quite a while. It does nothing abnormal. It stays exactly where it is supposed to be, high up in the sky.

Then the cab arrives and takes me to the hospital. The radio is turned on, and I cannot bring myself to make the driver turn it off. I could make him change the channel or turn it off but that would not be normal, right? Listening to the news is normal. (There is nothing new anyway. The pilots turned off the wrong engine, people died, the voice recorder and the flight data recorder were found. Did Dan Miller work last night at all?)

At the entrance of the hospital, a wave of memories makes me dizzy. Not just memories, I realize, also memories of all the fears I had yesterday. But John is not dead, or dying. He is fine, and we will leave this place together this morning. My wrist starts throbbing when I cross the entrance hall, as if to remind me of yesterday's abnormality. I ignore it. People with casts are nothing abnormal at a hospital.

When I finally arrive at John's room, find him sitting on his bed fully dressed (clothes Mycroft sent him, no doubt), watching the news. Somehow, he feels me coming in, looks at the door just at the right moment, and smiles. (And his smile touches my heart and melts something that built up over the last few hours.)

He opens his mouth to say something but I have to kiss him first.

We are not good in talking with words, the two of us, but we are brilliant at telling each other important stuff by kissing. I let him know that I missed him and that I am lost without him, and he tells me that he is fine and will be there for me.

A rather rude harrumph makes us stop. Well, with an intended delay of seven point eight seconds. I do not like being harrumphed out of a kiss, and neither does John. In fact, we kiss a little longer than we would have normally, just to spite whoever dares to interrupt us.

When I manage to take my eyes off of John (who is alive and has not died in an absolutely terrifying, completely abnormal plane crash), I look at Dan Miller.

He looks a bit more impressive in real life than on TV. There is intelligence in his eyes that make his otherwise ordinary face stand out if you watch closely. He appears to be careless in a way, even playful. Maybe it is his age.

(He is young, only 29, and he did work last night, slept about twenty minutes with a clipboard underneath his left cheek, had a sandwich for breakfast but did not stop working to eat, has a sister who earns more than him, hates cats, loves to play tennis but does not find time to do so as often as he wants, and the most horrendous thing about him – he deduces me. Me! It drives me up the wall almost instantly.)

I watch him closely for another moment. "It was melon, not peach," I tell him then. (Easy, he was fixating the stain it had left on my cast.)

"My sister earns less than me, she just married rich," he answered.

John watches us open-mouthed.

Now that was a clever one. I had made my deduction about his sister back at the hotel, when I recalled seeing him in the news, where he was wearing the wrist watch she gave him. He is not wearing it now, yet he knows I have made a (wrong, damn) deduction based on it. Meaning: he thought about what I might deduce about him in advance.

"Well," I say, doing my best to sound unimpressed, "you have done your homework concerning me. Did you also find time to investigate on the plane crash that happened yesterday?"

He waves my comment off, "Not a very exciting one."

I beg to disagree. (Memories of velocity and screams.) For some reason, I remain silent, so he goes on, "Once the black boxes are found intact, most of the thrill is gone." (People dying, people dead.)

John (who has watched both of us with a mixture of confusion and dawning comprehension -of what I have no idea) finally chimes in, "Well, did you only come here to complain about boredom, or is there something else we can do for you?"

He smiles at Miller the way he smiles at a second class criminal who tries to abduct me. It is scary, but only if you can tell what kind of smile it is.

Dan Miller can tell but he remains unimpressed. He is either very very brave or a big fool after all.

"I wanted to question the survivors before they flee back to their dull little homes but I can already tell that the two of you have got nothing fruitful to give."

(He went to the site of the crash again after working in some kind of hall, judging from the pattern of mud on his trousers. He dresses expensive, looking as neat as possible without being obviously overdressed while loping through mud and debris. It always takes him several minutes to make his dull light-brown hair look uncombed.)

He watches me closely again, his eyes wander up and down and up again in a second. I am sure he can deduce all the nightmarish visions that are dancing through my brain right now (the baby that stopped crying) (The woman with the broken neck) (The old lady trying to unfasten her seatbelt.)

I can only blink.

He sighs. "You surely detected that the left engine was on fire, right?"

"Yes," John volunteers when I refuse (am unable) to answer, "We even told the flight attendant ab-"

"And you did not think would be a clever little idea to say something again when the right engine was turned off instead?" Miller's voice is harsh and mocking now, he is talking fast and does not even look at us properly. "No, you thought, Oh, never mind, the pilots know best. We are only 27,500 feet up in the air, what could probably go wrong?"

When John opens his mouth again, Miller interferes, "Please spare me your stammering, you are only wasting my time. If you'll excuse me now, I need to find a helpful eye witness instead. Have a nice life!"

He has left the room even before his little speech is over. It feels like his exit should have some kind of sound effect like a low swoosh. I have to blink.

"He ..." I start, not sure how to end that thought.

There is something warm on my shoulder. John's hand. I feel my body relax a little.

"That was strange," John says, and something in his voice brings me back to the presence completely. There is this undertone I fail to identify.

"At least he is the best," I try to reassure John and he gives me another look I cannot fully deduce.

"Of course he is," he answers, and if I am not completely mistaken, there is a little giggle in his voice. Why? Why the hell is he close to giggling?

"What?", I demand to know, "What is it I am missing?"

John really giggles now, only for a second, and even though I still do not get what is going on, I love the sound. He pulls me closer, kisses me again (we are alive), and avoids looking me in the eyes afterwards.

"You know I was fond of you right from the start," he says, eyes trailed at a point next to my solar plexus, "even when almost everybody else failed to see who you really were, right?"

I hate when he talks in riddles. "What does this have to do with Dan Miller?" I demand to know, and now John looks me straight in the eyes, frowning a little.

"Doesn't he remind you of somebody?"

I feel myself frown too. (The good about frowning is that John thinks it looks endearing. The bad thing is that I feel like an idiot.)

John waits a while, then apparently takes pity in me. "Sherlock," he says, "Dan Miller is … you."

What a stupid idea. Completely incomprehensible. My mouth is already opened to protest, when my brain kicks in. Dan Miller is …

Brilliant. Arrogant. Without compassion. Impatient. Brilliant.

I hate when John is right about me.

John knows that, and he knows how I am feeling now, for he kisses me, softly and caring, and does not even allow the nurse to disturb us. After that kiss, I close my arms around him, pretending to press him close to me while in reality pressing myself close to him. There is something on my mind, something absolutely irrelevant after a day like yesterday. Something that pales in the shadow of surviving. Something I will only ever admit to John and to nobody else.

"I don't like him."

John presses a gentle kiss onto my forehead. "I knew you wouldn't."

Well, at least we have seen the last of him today.


	6. Chapter 6

Leaving the hospital takes us nearly two hours, and the fact that I could not tell how long it took us exactly afterwards slightly bothers me. There are two seats booked for us on every train leaving for London, so it does not matter anyway.

A cab takes us to the train station. On the radio, you can hear the basics of our disaster: flight SC-304 crashed after engine malfunction, killing 64 of the 171 people aboard. Both pilots dead, black boxes found. It sounds comprehensible that way. There is barely an idea of dust and blood and fear when you reduce it to those plain facts.

John's hand squeezes mine. (He is sitting on my right. Did he do that so he can hold my good hand?) He gives me a half-smile that comes from deep inside his heart."We survived," he says, and I return the squeeze. I cannot answer with words but I know I do not have to.

I want to close my eyes but I know that this is a bad idea. Closed eyes bring back all the horrors that the matter-of-fact news report has chased away. My face starts to throb. (I keep forgetting the haematoma there when they do not hurt.)

"Did they give you get enough pain killers?" John asks. He can read me like a book these days.

I nod, which is a stupid idea because it makes my face hurt even more. "I'll take them on the train," I promise. John squeezes my hand again. I am tired, even though it is only half past eleven.

At the train station, John takes the lead, steers us through the crowd, allows me to follow without thinking about it. He is holding my good hand the entire time. On the way to the platform he buys water and snacks. Inside the compartment he finds our seats and places me on the window seat so I can rest the left side of my face against the cold window while holding John's hand. First, he forces me to have something to eat, and then to take my pain killers. He inspects my face (carefully) and the x-ray pictures of my wrist (How did he get them?). Apparently, my face will heal and so will my wrist, even though it might take a while.

When his nursing instincts are satisfied, he leans back.

"What about your concussion?" I have to ask him after a while. My deductions skills are not fully functioning again just yet but I clearly remember the doctor talking about it being "severe" yesterday.

He closes his eyes for a second, involuntarily giving away the fact that he is not completely fine either. "It's okay," he answers.

Liar.

"Seriously," he says when seeing the look on my face, "It only causes a headache, and I took something against that at the hospital. I will need some sleep when we are home but I'll be fine."

My head is full of words and my heart is full of feelings. I try to speak a few times and then give up. For a while I am satisfied to watch the landscape rushing by outside the window. Trains are good. They are at ground level most of the time. (In the back of my mind a little voice tries to inform me about famous train accidents but I refuse to listen. Trains are safe, I tell myself. Trains are safe.)

"We should get a new present for Rosie before picking her up," John says after a while.

My stomach clenches, just for a second. That poor stuffed Nemo is probably still stuck underneath the remains of flight SC-304. That touches me more than it should. I nod, my brain feeling like fluid lead.

Then parenting instincts take over, and I gratefully allow it. "There is a book shop at the train station," I start thinking loudly, and my brain slowly takes up it's work again."We could get her the fish book we wanted to buy last week. You know, the one with all the fish names and the flaps."

John knows, of course. The dinosaur book of the same series kept her busy for weeks. Most of the flaps are still intact. She is getting older.

"She will love it," John states the obvious. After watching both films about lost fish she has become even more interested in sea life than before. The book delivers some information but more important, it will give her the names of myriads of new kinds of fish. John and I will have to learn them quickly to keep up with her.

Once on track with parenting, we both grab the chance to escape the reality of surviving flight SC-304 by talking about Rosie. We still need to find some afternoon activity where she can get all that energy out of her system for at least a day or so, and we still need to teach her patience.

After the extended visit with the Stamfords, she will be agitated for they always give her too much sweets and spoil her even more than we do. So our plan for today and tomorrow is to stay at home, go to the park maybe, and take it slow. Watching those clown fish again might be inevitable. Better than watching the funny pig family rolling on the floor laughing or Norman Price doing something stupid yet again.

From talking about Rosie we switch to planning what to eat when this week, and then to minor things like that we really really still need to fix the door handle that got loose because Rosie clings to it with all her body weight when we are not fast enough to prevent it.

Outside the window, the rough hills of Scotland change into the soft hills of England and then into the lively suburbs of London. London is home. Planes do not crash here.

John (whose headache is back) squeezes my hand when we leave the train, and I steer him towards the cabs. When the cab driver (who is also listening to the news about our crash) wants to know where to take us, I give him Mike's address. John squeezes my hand again over the children's seat in the middle of the back row. (We always catch cabs with children's seats when we want to travel with Rosie. No idea how Mycroft can do that.) John is longing to see our child, and so am I.

I can still see in his face that after all those months, after so many revelations, he is still gratefully surprised that I love Rosie that much.

He does not know that actually, I fell in love with her before I dared to fall in love with him again. Unloving John had been hard work. I started right after leaving the wedding, and only succeeded when Mary died in his arms and he was mourning her so much more than he had mourned me. (Or so I had thought. I had been an idiot, not understanding John at that time, but it had helped me with the stupid unloving-business.)

Going back there is cold and painful, therefore I always prefer remembering the first time I rediscovered my love. It had been the second night after Musgrave, the second night I spent on John's sofa. He had noticed my sleeplessness and had tried to cure it in a simple yet efficient way, by placing Rosie on my lap and handing me her bottle.

"There is something soothing about watching her drinking her milk," he had told me.

And so I watched her drinking her milk on my arm. She was radiating warmth while making the cutest little sounds. Her breathing was fast but regular, and she was snuggling against my body. At some point, she reached for the little finger of my hand that was holding her bottle, and she grabbed it.

I know that I was supposed to be soothed by her regular breath and her baby smell and the cooing sounds but I got distracted by something stirring inside my chest. It took me a while to realise what it was but once I identified the feeling, it started to grow.

I was falling in love with her.

Not that I did not love her already. I helped to bring her into the world, and my heart was reaching out for her the second I held her in my arms in the car. But there was not much space for me in the Watson family those days, and Mary made it more than clear that she did not wish me to love Rosie more than godfathers normally do. Just like I was not allowed to love John any longer.

But that night, my love for her somehow forced its way back into my chest and sat there, waiting for my approval. I clearly remember looking at her, her little nose that already resembled John's, her tiny fingers that were curled around my little finger, her tiny ears.

Allowing myself to fall for her again, head over heels, was a risk. It could mean rejection, and pain, and by God I have had more than enough of that since I jumped off that roof.

But suddenly I was tired of being careful, tired of having to decide instead of just feeling, tired of shutting myself away from what I really wanted.

I remember stroking her arm with the hand she was not grabbing, and then I made my decision. Yes, I would allow myself to love her, come hell or high water. My heart did a funny thing that moment, and what I thought was an already overpowering feeling grew even stronger. I could barely breathe for a while.

When I was able to look up, I was staring right into John's face, wide open with sympathy and warmth that night, and something I did not know, something completely new I could not identify until later, and the love for Rosie that was still spreading inside my chest reached out for him as well, gave reluctant me a powerful kick into the stomach and made me fall for him harder than before.

He held my gaze that night, and smiled at me, and I knew I was hopelessly in love with the two of them. Of course that feeling did not prevent me from being an ignorant fool when it came to John's feelings for me, so our first kiss happened a lot later. But reminiscing that moment later, it was clear to both of us that the second round of our own private love story had begun that night.

The bang of the cab door brings me back into the present. John has already left the cab, and I hurry to follow. Of course he is waiting for me in front of the Stamford's door, would have waited for minutes, hours if necessary. Giving me time when being lost in my thoughts is his way of showing me his love, his version of giving me flowers.

The door is opened by Rosie who is bouncing around like a mad rubber ball. She is happy to see us, and excited to find the present we brought her, and reluctant to leave because she knows there will be no more chocolate for the rest of the day, and eager to go home with us because she misses all the books she left at home, and hates to come to a stop to put on her shoes, and does not want to put on her jacket, and does not know where Doggy is but she cannot leave without him of course, and wants to know if we missed her, and finally collapses into the children's seat drenched in sweat, singing nursery rhymes for Daddy and me.

I missed her chaos.

Then another thought hits me. We had discussed taking her with us to Scotland. It had been a bad idea, and we had not discussed it for longer than five seconds, but the thought had been there. I had completely forgotten about it until now. Closing my eyes brings new visions. Rosie on that plane, Rosie screaming during the descent, Rosie thrown out of my arms by the impact when the plane hits the ground …

A sharp pain brings me back to reality. Rosie (unharmed and alive of course) has pulled my hair to regain my attention. Normally we reprimand her for pulling hair but today I am glad she did. A quick look out of the window tells me we are almost home. A quick look at John tells me he is concerned about me. John concerned is almost unbearable at the moment, so I focus on Rosie instead.

She is chatting about dinosaurs, happy to be with us again. By concentrating on her, I can keep those dark thoughts away for a while. She is not really disturbed by my cast, only curious. Too young for real empathy, I need to tell her three times that it really hurts me when she knocks against it with her fist.

Coming home feels good. We allow Mrs Hudson to shower us with concern and compassion for a while before retreating to our flat. Rosie pulls me into the corner with her toys instantly and makes me voice the thoughts of several stuffed animals she wants to talk to. (She would have loved that stuffed Nemo.)

John spends some time with us, then prepares food. We eat in front of the TV. (Bad habit, that, but the only way to make Rosie be something similar to quiet for a little while.) She can choose, so we watch that little girl travelling to a fantasy world through her closet to help a nice dinosaur, and then we are forced to endure that American puppet singing about the dragon with bad breath.

I am extremely relieved we do not have to watch him sing about the penguin going to her wedding by plane. I am not sure I could stand planes today.

After dinner, Rosie crawls onto my lap, makes Daddy bring us books and we spend the rest of the evening reading. When it is time to go to bed, she decides that John is to brush her teeth today while I have to prepare her milk. I can hear them giggle in the bathroom and it makes my heart light. This is home.

I am the one to feed her milk in bed today. (Another bad habit, feeding milk after brushing her teeth, but inevitable to her sleeping routine.) After drinking she tells me all about each and every kind of sweets she has had at the Stamfords and when she will eat all of that again. When I finally tuck her in and leave her room, I can hear her talking to Doggy. (She barely ever falls asleep quickly. It is more likely that we will hear her talk and chant for another hour.)

When I go downstairs again, I find John half-asleep. (His head hurts even though he pretends to be fine.) Cuddling on the sofa is not easy with the cast but we manage for a while before I force him go to bed. I pretend to be tired as well and lie down beside him but I sneak out as soon as I am sure he is asleep.

From the living-room I can still hear Rosie chanting for a while before she falls asleep as well.

The evening has been so normal that it hurts.

It had been impossible to fall asleep next to John. The second I close my eyes, I am back on the plane, feeling gravity pulling me down. I can even hear the sound of wind rushing by outside the cabin. The absence of the noise the engines were supposed to make.

There is no way I will fall asleep tonight.

So instead, I open my laptop and cannot help but do some more research on the crash. Pictures of the broken plane. Short reports by other survivors. Nothing new from everybody's hero of the AAIB. He surely sleeps tonight, undisturbed by thoughts of the victims, unaware of the survivors' pain. (I know that for I have been like that once. Happy about a serial killer, rude to witnesses. Life had been easier those days. And colder.)

I cannot play the violin with my cast, so I retreat into my mind palace and practice a difficult piece of music there. I want to play it during my next visit to Sherrinford.

That leads me to another unpleasant thought: I will not be able to play the violin in reality for a long time but playing it is the only way of communication between Eurus and I. What will I do when visiting her again next week? I do not have the slightest idea.

I stay inside my mind palace until it is time to sneak back into bed. There is no need for John to be concerned about me not sleeping, so I dutifully yawn when Rosie wakes him by singing loudly. She never yells for us in the morning, she always sings one nursery rhyme or the other. Funny girl.

John kisses me, crawls out of bed and goes to her room to pick her up. I go into the kitchen to make coffee. When they come to join me, my heart makes a funny little jump inside my chest. It is almost unbearable how much I love them.

(And there it is again, this evil little thought. If John had died on that rotten plane, I would be alone with Rosie right now. Or would I? Most likely Mummy and Dad would be here to -)

I need to push this thought aside. We are alive, and home, and life will go on now. I have got all reason to be as happy as John seems to be.

Only that I do not feel that way. Instead, I manage to stumble through two more days before I break.

There is no dramatic breaking point, only Rosie demanding that I play her favourite tunes on the violin. I try and explain why I am unable to do so but she keeps on demanding, again and again, and then she cries because she does not understand that you cannot play with a broken wrist.

And this is too much. Because I am missing the violin violently. Because I still hear the sound of the wind rushing by outside the cabin. Because I barely slept since the crash. Because John is still full of happiness and joy of life while I fail to be content. Tears are running down Rosie's face, and that does not mean that much for they also rolled down when she did not get another helping of apple crumble but they hurt me anyway.

I put her down, mumble something and run away.

For two hours and eight minutes I wander the streets of London, unseeing. I do not feel better after that but more composed again. Able to face a crying toddler again without crying myself.

The wonderful thing about John is that he lets me be. When I open the door, I hear him say, "See, there is Papa again. We will hug him, won't we?" Plain and simple. No demanding that I talk, no accusations, no lack of comprehension.

I admire him and Rosie. A simple hug, and the world is all right again. I let them hug me, return the hug, and let our routine carry me along until I bring Rosie to bed at night.

After closing the door, I remain standing outside and listen to Rosie falling asleep. First, she tells Doggy about the fish from her new book, then she quotes films we have seen, then she sings a few nursery rhymes. Then the singing stops mid-sentence, a sure sign she has fallen asleep.

There is consolation in how she sticks to her routine no matter what happened to John and me on that plane.

When I enter the living-room, John is doing one thing or the other on his laptop. He has not yet noticed me standing in the door, so I take my time to watch him. He is sitting upright but at ease, hair a bit tousled, his eyes -

His eyes are emanating energy and confidence. As so often before, he is the complete opposite of me right now. I do not know if I am attracted or repelled by it.

"How are you doing that?" I ask him before thinking.

His head snaps up in surprise, "What?"

I move closer, feel the burning need to be next to him, want to touch him, but feel trapped inside my despair. I end up sitting down next to his chair, my chin resting against one of his legs. "How do you manage to be so intact after all that?"

John puts his laptop away. I feel his movement, gentle and careful. He does not want to scare me away again. Then he places his hand on my head. I lean into his touch, and he understands the motion. He starts to slowly massage my scalp.

It takes him a long time to find the right words, "We survived a plane crash."

I have to snort, telling him without words that this is not enough for me to understand. The massage goes on, and after a while he says, "I knew how to maximise our chances of survival, and I told you so, and you followed my orders, and we survived. I cannot explain it properly," (there is honest pain in his voice, the feeling of not being understood, the inadequacy of his words) "but we survived. We dropped 27,500 feet from the sky and survived. I feel like -" I hear him drawing a breath. "I feel like we can survive everything!"

A common feeling among survivors, I know. I want to feel like him, I really, really want to. But whenever _I_ think about the crash, all that comes to my mind are the dying and the dead and the unbearable fear that John could be amongst them.

I envy him for missing the worst part of the crash due to his concussion.

My wrist hurts.

He sighs, and continues caressing my head. I close my eyes and feel my body relax just a bit. He sighs again. "I am sorry you don't feel that way," he says, almost whispers. "I try not to be too obtrusive but … I wish I could make you feel it too, this joy to be alive."

His hand on my head stops for a moment. He must be considering something important, all his attention focused on a decision. Then it starts moving again, stronger, more purposeful. He does not have to explain, and he knows that. So instead of struggling for words, he shows me what he decided. His hand moves from my head to my chin. He lifts my face while leaning down himself (it must be uncomfortable bending down like this) and kisses me, long and soft and with intensity.

I close my eyes, and allow myself to feel his lips on mine, hot, wanting. There is longing in my body, of course, and with every second of this kiss, I melt a little more. When I open my eyes again, he is looking at me, silently asking for my permission to make me feel the joy he feels. I close my eyes again, and nod.

The way he kisses me changes instantly. What was a slow, satisfying kiss becomes something more raw, full of want and lust. He groans into my mouth, and I start to gasp. John being aroused is something I cannot resist.

When we kiss like that, I always remember years of doubt, of not even knowing he was my friend, not believing he could ever be a lover. Hearing those sounds out of his mouth, simply because it is me he is kissing (for I do little more than kissing back, I think), is such a powerful turn-on.

Parts of my brain register John standing up and me blindly following his movements without breaking the kiss only for a second. Now that we are standing, my hips are pressed against him (he is smaller than me, our hips do not meet quite perfectly) and make movements that would embarrass me in everybody else's presence.

There is no embarrassment when I am with John that way, and what is happening now is so much more than sex. I need him, need to feel his joy, his lust for life. And he gives me what I need. Playfully, he moves a bit away from me, makes me follow him, steers us towards the bedroom that way. (No more sex in the living room since Rosie can leave her room and trot downstairs on her own.)

He denies me kissing his lips, can barely conceal a grin at my longing groan, giggles a little. The most beautiful sound in the world. He moves backward and I follow. In the bedroom, he finally lets me kiss him again, and I am so hungry I almost come just because I can kiss him again.

It will be more than sex, and we both know it. It will be healing.

I put all my despair, all my fear of losing him into this kiss, and he answers me. His hands start to stroke my entire body, stripping off my clothes, stripping off my despair with them. His movements are steady and precise. I can barely breathe. I want to press my body against him, melt with him. Tear his clothes off of him. (Not sure how to accomplish that with just one hand.)

John (clever John) drives me crazy by pushing me back a little, slowing me down. He makes me sit down on the bed, undresses himself while standing in front of me, not allowing me to help. He is looking at me the entire time, so I can see the playful gleam in his eyes. He knows that watching him undress drives me crazy, and he plays with me and my desire.

He gives me exactly what I need right now.

It takes him forever, and I feel like bursting with anticipation. When he makes a show of slowly taking his socks off, I lose it. There is nothing elegant about the way I throw him onto the bed with my good arm. John giggles again. I can see in his eyes that I did not surprise him at all, that I am merely doing what he wanted me to do.

We barely ever use words during sex.

I am leaning over him now, fixing him onto his back by holding his hands over his head. (Good thing his hands are so small, I can hold both of them with my right hand while leaning on my left elbow). I am enjoying to have the upper hand for the moment but here is mischief in his eyes already. When I move my head down to kiss him, he starts to nibble at my ear, then he sucks at my throat. God I want this man. For a second I am distracted with the burning feeling in my lower body, and he takes advantage of that immediately. He gently frees one of his hands, lets it caress my arm, then my side, my bottom, and then his hand slides towards my balls, -

And suddenly I am lying flat my bed, John widely grinning above me. (He must have flipped me around while I was busy being wild for his pressure on my cock. He is evil, and enjoying it.)

I close my eyes again, let him take the lead once more. I do not have to look at him anyway, the sight of him, grinning at me with affection, is burned into my retina. I feel his lips on mine again, and this time, with the first wave of desperate need ebbing away, I am able to really feel it, all of it. His body pressed against mine, emanating heat. His lips, soft yet strong, moving in time with mine. His hands, stroking every part of me they can reach, arm and shoulder and chest and side, caressing the part of my left arm where the cast begins. His tongue, demanding, seeking, inside my mouth.

There is no more giggling now. John is moaning, seriously wanting me (me!), and I chime in. I can feel my hip moving on its own again, until his hand finally comes to rest on my cock.

It is a little miracle, each and every time we are having sex, that I am able to survive the crossfire of feelings and sound and smell and emotion.

I am moving into his hand now, while he kisses my throat again and again. I could not open my eyes even if my life depended on it. And he knows. He knows me so well it hurts.

"Look at me," he whispers. There is pressure on my cock now, and release, and pressure again, a slowly pulsating rhythm. God.

"Look at me," he repeats. I force my eyes open and find myself staring into his. He presses me harder, kisses me again, then looks at me. "We survived," he says. I could not agree more. I want to answer him but suddenly, my mouth is filled with his tongue again, forbidding me to talk right now.

We barely ever use words during sex, and when something is said, it must be of immense importance. We survived.

When John breaks our kiss, I get another chance to look at him. There is still this gleam in his eyes, the joy of being alive, but the playfulness is gone. It is replaced by something more sober, more serious. Desire.

His hand lets go of my cock and moves to my backside. There is always this moment of silent communication, wordlessly discussing who will do what, and like so many times before, John's need fit mine perfectly. I nod, knowing he does not need that sign of agreement for he already understood. He smiles at me, and starts to widen me as gently as he can.

Only now do I realize how tense I am, must have been for days. I will my body to relax, and when that does not work, I concentrate on John again. There is some space between our bodies now, as he is working on my backside. It feels cold but allows me access to the region between his legs with my right hand.

I touch him, just a gentle stroke with my fingertips, and he draws a sharp breath. It is amazing that my fingers alone can draw such a sound from him. I know he loves my fingers for some obscure reason, imagines how they look on his cock right now. It makes him even harder than before.

I love drawing sounds from him, so I continue exploring every inch of the soft skin, while he has already worked his third finger inside me. Just when I wonder if he has avoided touching my prostate he hits it, sending bolts of electricity through my entire body. Damn, he is good in bed.

His fourth finger wanders inside easily now, and I lose control of my hand. I had planned to continue stroking him softly, bringing him to the edge just with my fingertips, but in the wake of arousal I am grabbing him, holding him, becoming more and more fierce.

His eyes widen when my touch becomes rougher, he has to draw a deep breath. He is always so self-aware when aroused, and I understand how privileged I am to see him like that.

"I cannot come when you look at me," he had once told me. An assessment that turned out to be false. He had not been able to come when other people looked at him, never able to let go, to let control slip away completely. For some incomprehensible reason he feels safe in my presence, and the first time he came under my observant stare, he was nothing but surprised.

And suddenly it hits me. I could have lost him on that plane. Of course I knew that already, been fearing it when searching for him after the crash. But now this potential loss is filled with reality. I would have lost seeing him like this, aroused and happy. I would have lost the solemn look on his face shortly before coming. I would have lost the half-serious reprimand in his voice when he hears me telling Rosie unicorns died out shortly after the dinosaurs. I would have lost him writing grocery shopping lists with earnest compassion. I would have lost him smiling silently over his first cup of tea in the morning, made by me.

I would have lost my life.

"We survived," I hear John's voice whispering into my ear. I open my eyes to look at him (and have to blink a few times to see him clearly, no idea why) and his face is still the same, still emanating happiness, still vibrating with the joy of being invincible.

All I can do is nod, and let go of his cock so I can embrace him, press his body against mine, feel his invincibility diffusing into every cell of my body. His energy is recharging me, and suddenly I can feel it too. Joy fills my soul, and I have to release some of it through my mouth or I would explode. I kiss him, wildly, not bothering that our teeth clash, and John kisses back, gets hold of my hair with his hand, holds me in place, sucks at my mouth, and we both get wet with pre-come.

"I love you," I gasp between kisses. We barely talk during sex, and when something is said, it is of immense importance.

John is beyond talking. He clumsily reaches for the lube in the night table, and closes his eyes when applying it to his cock. He hurries, knowing I am missing body contact, knowing I will suffocate if he stays away for too long.

There is nothing soft, nothing romantic about sex today. John is inside me before I can think of relaxing, his hand closes around my cock with determination and starts to move in time with his hips. I feel my body going stiff with arousal, feel my hips moving, intensifying John's movements. I am drenched in sweat, mine and his, and he just does not stop. He pushes forward and pushes and pushes, and I move along. Not sure if I am breathing.

His groans are deep and almost animalistic now. He is filling me and does not stop pushing and pushing. Every single time he hits my prostate hard with his cock, and I am dizzy with want and need. The sounds I am making scare me a little. Normally we try to be quiet, not wanting to disturb the child, but there is no holding back today.

I am so close to coming that I am holding my breath and John pushes and pushes and my body is prickling and my skin is raw and I can hear he is close so close and so am I and he pushes and pushes and his hand is hot on my cock and my vision is disturbed for I see black dots dancing and he pushes and I need to kiss him and I stretch my neck so our lips meet again and it is uncomfortable and his tongue touches mine and think I am screaming into his mouth when my body is pushed over the edge and I am pulsating and pulsating and John is moaning and something hot is filling me now my head jerks and he breaks the kiss to breathe.

And then he collapses onto my belly, slippery with my own come. I need to breathe too, and for a long time I can do nothing but fill my lungs with air and feel his almost limp body lying on mine.

"We survived," I tell him when I am able to talk again. He just grins at me, satisfaction wide on his happy face. We stay like that for a moment, his body covering mine, all the rough passion gone for now, making space for softness and compassion. I stroke his back with my good hand, just enjoying the feeling of his wet skin underneath my fingertips. His head rests heavily on my chest. For a second, our world is perfect.

It lasts for about two minutes, then the reality of parenting takes over.

"We need to go to the bathroom," John whispers, and I nod.

A look at the alarm clock tells us that Rosie has been in bed for about seventy-eight minutes now. She will wake up soon, and we will need to be ready for an afternoon filled with books on dinosaurs and playing shopping in the kitchen and maybe an episode of that pig family so we can rest for a moment. We need to be un-sticky for all that, and preferably dressed.

"Off to the shower with you," John commands, knowing only too well that I hate not showering after sex. He himself is satisfied with a wet cloth, so we venture into the bathroom where he secures my cast with a plastic bag and leaves before me. Knowing that he is already prepared to welcome Rosie should she wake up now, I take some leisure time under the shower, dawdling a bit just because I can.

We are alive, and we are ready to face every day's life again. The crash has been traumatic and will haunt me for a while, that much is for sure. But it is over now, and I am able to go on, getting over it.

I hum a nursery rhyme while drying my hair with a towel, get dressed in the bedroom which takes a while when only using one hand, and enter the living room with no hurry. Rosie is still asleep, my ears tell me, so John and I will have a few more stolen minutes on our own. I could check my mails for a case, and John could write the grocery shopping list. He loves doing that for whatever reason.

I realize something is wrong the second I enter the room. John is sitting in front of the small TV we bought some time ago, stiff and alert. Then I look at the screen.

A wiggly film shows a plane, presumably high up in the air, moving oddly. It is constantly diving and rising again. The people inside must be awfully sick. "Live", a little icon in the top right corner of the screen tells us. The ticker at the bottom informs us that a film team outside London is accidentally catching the wild ride on tape and sending it directly to the station so it can be broadcast all over the world.

Another plane crash. (For a crash it will be, and soon, the plane is so obviously out of control it hurts to watch.) Do the people aboard know what that will happen to them? My stomach twists painfully, the good feeling completely gone. The people up there are going to die, and we are watching. I feel sick.

Then something fires inside my brain, a little thought fighting its way around the horror, kicking away consternation, making me _think_. Three plane crashes within two weeks. The similarity to the Kegwood air disaster. The chances of catching today's flight on camera. Two crashes within two weeks are unlikely. A staged crash today. Three staged crashes?

Three are always a series.

"We need to contact Dan Miller," I tell John.

He gives me an uncomprehending look, "Why?" He thinks about it for a moment, then goes on, "Didn't they say he was the best in aviation accidents?"

"He is," I say, "But he is surely not the best to catch a serial killer."


End file.
